We are engulfed
in an immense
ancient indifference
that does not sleep
or dream.

Call it Nature if you will,
though everything that is
is natural—
the lignite-bearing earth,
the factory,
a darkness taller than the sky.
This out-of-doors
that wins our release
and temporary peace—
not because it is pristine
or pretty,
but because it has no pity
or self-pity.

–A. E. Stallings

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A friend sent several photographs taken after the early season snow storm in Lake County.  The snow was not so deep but was heavy, and laden with ice.  So we had wide-spread power outages.  These pictures were taken of a rare undeveloped section of Lake county which includes Almond Marsh.  Initially I was struck by the beauty of asymmetrical form, of a normal visually complex landscape now abstracted, simplified by a blanket of white snow.  The photo of the marsh shows how the snow reduces the remnants of plants to stark simple forms surrounding the tableau of the marsh, which is freezing over now.

The second photo captures a wooden fence, a boundary surely, the straight line bisecting the curved lines of nature. If you look carefully you can see a trail of wild animal tracks in the snow parallel to the fence line.  Those tracks are probably of a rabbet.  Rabbits are herbivores and this passing rabbit was seeking a suitable meal of buds, of tender stems.  Rabbits are also prey for the hawks, the foxes, the coyotes that live in this area.

These thoughts are all contained in the quotation from A. E. Stallings.  There is beauty when we observe Nature but the beauty is the mind’s interpretation of light impinging upon the retina.  Beauty is “of the mind.”

The rabbet, the hawk, the fox, the coyote know only survival.